Philip Roth - Letting Go

DREAM MY MOTHER TELLS ME TO PUT CHICKEN IN REFRIGERATOR. CHICKEN IS IN PIECES AND HOLEY (WHOLLY HOLY). THERE IS COMPANY. I SHOUT THAT I AM TIRED OF TAKING DIRECTIONS. MANY MEMBERS OF FAMILY IN AUDIENCE (COMPANY — MY LIFE A SPECTACLE — BEING WATCHED). MY MOTHER HURT, WOUNDED, FLABBERGASTED, BUT I WAS HAVING A GOOD TIME. WHY SHOULD SHE INTERRUPT ME AGAIN. I GO OFF TO OTHER ROOM, MY FATHER POLISHING HIS SHOES IN BED. THEN WE GO AWAY TO SCHOOL, WHERE AS RETURNING GRADUATE I TRY TO DRESS UP LIKE GYM CLASS BUT LOOK AWKWARD, CLOWNISH AND AM TOLD BY GYM TEACHER (SPIGLIANO) WHY DON’T I GO SWIMMING IN POOL OR BOX. BEFORE OR AFTER THIS I HAVE A BROTHER (ME) AND HE AND I SEPARATE FROM COMPANY AND WE GO INTO GARAGE WHERE HE IS UPSET ABOUT WAY I HANDLED MY MOTHER. I TRY TO EXPLAIN WITH AID OF THIRD PARTY (WALLACE? WALLACH) THAT I MUST BE FREE OF HER. I AM TOO OLD. MY BROTHER CRIES. I READ (PLEAD) WITH HIM. THEN I GO UPSTAIRS WHERE I SEE MAURY AND SOME WOMAN AND MAURY’S WIFE, WHO IS LIBBY. SOME STRONG DUMB GUY STARTS TOSSING ABOUT GASOLINE (SPERM?) AND TRIES TO SET ME ON FIRE (SEX?). WHY AM I PRINTING? CHILD-EXPLAINING. DO I WANT À GOOD MARK FOR DREAM TOO? I RUN ACROSS ROOM TO PROTECT MYSELF. HE FINALLY (I THINK) DOES START FIRE. IN NEWSPAPER IT SAID HE HAD HISTORY OF POTENTIALITY FOR THIS. THIS KNOWLEDGE SOMEHOW COMFORTS ME.

CHICKEN — TO BE PUT IN REFRIG. TO BE TURNED OFF SEXUALLY. CHICKEN=SHIKSE.

1ST. WHERE MOMMAS HAVE POWER. FOOD.

2ND. WET SLIMY COLD SEXUAL, LIKE A CUNT.

SHOULDN’T CUNT BE WARM? TIRED OF BEING TOLD WHAT TO DO SO WON’T PUT CHICKEN IN REFRIG. BUT NOBODY EVER TOLD ME WHAT TO DO. ALWAYS ON OWN. RE-ENACTMENT OF EVERYBODY TELLING ME DON’T MARRY LIBBY. EVERYBODY RIGHT. EVERYBODY WRONG. THIS IS

all beside the point. He put down Asher’s drawing pencil; his head dropped forward on the board. But now he was wide awake. Chicken equals shikse — so what? Someone is throwing gasoline around, so what? If he were to understand it all, right down to his father polishing his shoes in bed — what then? The problem, Libby, is not psychological. The problem is something else. Why did you have to go to that doctor? “Because I couldn’t take it any more.” “Why didn’t you at least talk it over with me? What about this bill?” He was shaking the day’s mail in her face. “Because we don’t talk anything over.” “We usually talk twenty-five dollars over.” “I didn’t know it was twenty-five dollars when I went. I didn’t do it again, did I?” “I don’t know, did you?” “No!” “What did you think an analyst was going to tell you?” “There’s something wrong with me, Paul.” “You’ve been sick—” “What makes me sick?” “Germs! Bugs! Viruses!” “You!” she cried. “Then divorce me! Let’s get it over with—” Five and a half years, and it was the first time that word had been uttered in their house. Libby’s face fell, and his own sense of failure was complete. They had all been right, Asher, his mother, his— Impossible! But he had said the word at last; it hurt very little to say it again. “Let’s get a divorce then.” “But you’re my husband ,” Libby cried. “Maybe then that’s the trouble—” “It’s me! ” She wept. “Stop crying, damn it, it’s not you.” “I don’t want a divorce, I want a regular normal life—” “Libby, it’s hopeless, it’s awful—” “That’s why I went to the doctor— ”

The phone rang, not back in Chicago, but in New York, three feet from where he sat. Even before he had raised it to his ear, he heard the voice starting in. He set it down. It started to ring again, and he did not bother to lift it this time, only pressed it down in its cradle. And that was how it went throughout the afternoon: what little light there was in the room slipped away, and the phone rang, and at Asher’s drawing board he held down the receiver as though it were a lid beneath which all the premises of his life were melting away.

The next morning Asher had to empty an entire closet to get to an ironing board and an iron. He set up the board by the windows and pressed away at his suit; then he unearthed a clean white shirt and tied his black tie while looking in a mirror over the kitchen sink. Paul slid the breakfast dishes into a pan of water. Asher’s reflection showed a grave turn to the mouth, but Paul made no comment; he had been able to induce in himself something that resembled serenity, which would carry him the rest of the way. Perhaps it was a good thing that the turmoil of the day before had worn him down. He had made his decisions in bed with his last ounce of energy; now, so long as he kept his mouth shut and accepted the decisions without airing them to Asher, he could coast on through.

But Asher asked, “What do you have on the agenda?”

Now that his uncle had spoken, Paul realized all the irritation he had been feeling toward the man ever since he had opened his eyes that morning and looked across the room to see Asher sleeping in his bed. He felt the emotion, however, without fully understanding it. “I’ll read,” he said.

“Maybe you ought to take in a movie. Keep your mind occupied.”

“Reading occupies me.”

“Go to the museums.”

“Maybe I will.”

“You don’t like museums?”

“Asher, you don’t have to be nervous about me.”

Asher was back by the closet; he tugged and pulled and finally dove all the way in. Some tubes of paint rolled out across the floor, and Asher emerged beneath a dark hat, an honest-to-God mourner. Old man Herz was dead.

“You feel all right?” he asked, snapping the brim.

“I feel fine.”

“You want to walk me to the subway? Get some fresh air? Why don’t you put on a jacket and stroll over?”

“Asher, I’m not going to jump out any windows.”

“That,” said Asher, all dressed up and looking sinister and pathetic, “that would be a gross misunderstanding of what I’ve been saying.”

“You didn’t influence me. You don’t have to worry.”

“I got the feeling I talked you into something. You walk around here like a young fellow up to no good. Look, it all comes out of the nineteenth century, Paul. It starts in the eighteenth, in fact, way back when. Reason, social progress, reform, right up to the New Deal and Point Four — it all boils down to inordinate guilt about the other fellow—”

“Please.”

Asher gave up and started for the door. When he turned to face Paul again, he looked a hundred years old. “Do me a favor, will you? Stroll over with me to Astor Place, that’s all. Walk me to the subway. I don’t really feel all my strength this morning.” It did not seem like a ploy either.

They walked north on Third Avenue toward the subway. There was a City Welfare Shelter on one of the cross streets, a brick building with barred windows; just as they passed, all the bums and cripples who had breakfasted there began to make their way out into the sunshine. It was such a brilliant day that some of the unfortunates seemed a little cowed by all the light. But the merciless sun also gave off merciful heat, and after squinting at it, they limped, shuffled, staggered, or trudged out the doorway; one way or another, they all headed uptown, where the money was, and the wine.

In his dark hat and creased trousers Asher must have resembled a wage-earner, for two small men approached. While one assumed a variety of postures which he must have felt to be the attitudes of humility, the other, in a soft voice, made the pitch. “Sir, Mr. Burns and me have just got out of jail, and we’re a little nervous.” He smiled at Paul but bore down on Asher. “Could you give us a little something, sir, for a starter?”